On the most basic level, restaurants provide a service to customers in return for payment. But, as I've written before, restaurants provide much more than a mere transaction to both the people running them and the diners who frequent them. Restaurants are in the business of hospitality, and hopefully strive to create a positive environment for customers that extends beyond food (from charging a cell phone to calling a taxi).

Now, restaurants can even review customers based on their tipping, behavior, and annoying dietary restrictions and share those reviews and notes online with other restaurants.

Wait, what?!

Bloombergreports that Austrialian online reservations giant Dimmi has launched a new feature called ResDiary, in which a restaurant's notes about specific customers can be shared with other restaurants that use the service.

Is this the killer app behind the next generation of restaurant reservation services? A harbinger of a brave new era of dining customization?

Hardly. I'll come out and say it: Not only is this a violation of privacy that takes the Google-ization of restaurant reservations too far, but this is a bad and unnecessary move that stands to hurt the public perception of the restaurant industry.

As it stands now, reservations systems for companies like OpenTable already have built-in functions that allow individual restaurants to keep notes on their customers--disliked ingredients, dishes a customer loved the last time they were in, and yes, even tipping habits. It's true that many restaurants use these functions and depend on these in-house profiles to provide service that keeps customers coming back.

That's one thing. Sharing all of that information with other restaurants (over 2,500 restaurants, in the case of Dimmi's network) is another.

To make sure I wasn't missing something, I spoke with Will Guidara, noted front-of-house man and co-owner of NYC's Eleven Madison Park. While Guidara's team is consistently recongized for its commitment to service, they recently stirred up a fair amount of discussion about customer privacy when a New York magazine article revealed that the restaurant commonly Googles customers to look for information that can help improve service.

His first reponse to hearing about ResDiary: "It sounds a little bit like communism." Jokes aside, Guidara's issues with the idea are two-fold. First, he points out that any restaurant that participates gives up a competitive advantage by building an "extensive" database of customer notes and providing it to other restaurants. But, second, and more importantly, he believes sharing that information would be a breach of trust between Eleven Madison Park and its guests: "A lot of the notes we have are things that guests have willingly told us," says Guidara. "It doesn't seem like our place to give that away."

So what's the Dimmi's argument for the service's existence? According to CEO Stevan Premutico it's so "diners will behave better, tip better, treat staff better." Essentially, if diners know they're being publicly judged on their behavior while at a restaurant, they're shape up.

It's the same argument Yelp defenders use to justify the Wild West of restaurant reviews that site has become. Despite questionable taste, a lack of qualifications, and chronic grammatical errors, literally anyone can review a restaurant on Yelp or services like it. Restaurants can read customers reviews and react to them by quickly making changes. And that can't help but lead to improvements. Why can't it work that way for diners, too?

One critical difference: Restaurants are businesses charging for goods and services. Diners, on the other hand, are private citizens. How diners act within a non-public space (a restaurant) while receiving those goods and services should be completely private. While businesses should have tools to improve their service, it can't come at the expense of personal information and public trust. You don't sign away your privacy by signing the credit-card slip.

ResDiary is the next-gen equivalent of trash-talking an ex-girlfriend on a bathroom wall--you just shouldn't do it.

So far, there's no word of OpenTable (or any of the other reservation services that are cropping up in the U.S.) adopting a system that's similar to ResDiary. Let's hope it stays that way.

I hope this will fire back seriously against the restaurants. As you wrote, restaurants are in a service business, customers are private persons. There should be no public record of client behaviour. What next? Shops will publish a record of people that don't buy, just browse & check out products asking too many questions?

mahalonalo
12:24:46 AM on
06/06/14

Here's the thing: most people will treat each restaurant differently depending on the food and service. So a bad review of a customer dining at a bad restaurant may not necessarily reflect how that customer would behave in a better restaurant with better food and/or better service. So the information shared may not actually be helpful. The information may, in fact, go against the restaurant industry since decisions made by the restaurant will probably be based on incorrect information. Open Table's business format is more practical.

DamnU
11:29:45 PM on
06/05/14

I think its ok, as long it they don't share my personal contact information. I dont care if another restaurant knows I like my steak medium rare or club soda with my meal or I am a good tipper when the service is good. Good service at a restaurant is hard to find these days. Also, if it keeps the idiots out of my favorite place that would be great.

j_ag
11:01:22 PM on
06/04/14

Yeah, it's overkill but...well, many could stand to improve their treatment of staff in restaurants. Most of the notes I've ever seen anywhere I work are either positive or specific to guest preference or food allergy. It's too bad about the minority of people that apparently need to be shamed into better behavior. In my city, this is still just called industry gossip- and, lemme tell you, word gets around just fine the old fashioned way.

duuudeman
07:23:49 PM on
06/04/14

This is a horrible idea. I would make it a conscious effort NOT to dine at any of those restaurants that decided to gossip on how I acted as a patron.